The People Vs. Barack Obama

by Ben Shapiro

  A SHORT HISTORY OF ENEMIES LISTS

  President Obama’s administration isn’t rare in this respect. Since the rise of administrative government in the United States, targeting of political opposition has become more and more common. It truly began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the greatest friend the IRS ever had. During his tenure, FDR sicced the tax authorities on millionaire former Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon. FDR’s Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. ordered Elmer Irey, head of the criminal division of the Treasury’s tax enforcement branch in Washington, to trump up phony tax charges on Mellon. In 1934, despite a Justice Department memo showing that there was nothing legitimate to prosecute Mellon over, the Roosevelt administration announced prosecution against Mellon. Working with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the FDR administration somehow ginned up fines worth more than $3 million against Mellon. When the original charges were thrown out by a federal grand jury, the supposedly independent Board of Tax Appeals came up with charges worth just under $500,000.8

  FDR used the IRS to target Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, a fellow Democrat who threatened FDR’s hegemony over his populist base; Long ended up speaking against the IRS from the floor of the Senate. FDR also targeted William Randolph Hearst, Father Coughlin, and Representative Hamilton Fish (R-NY), who represented Hyde Park, where FDR lived. For years the IRS dogged Fish, who ended up winning his case against the agency, winning a small tax refund.9 FDR especially hated Moe Annenberg, the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer; he launched an IRS investigation into him, and refused when Annenberg offered to pay all back taxes. “I want Moe Annenberg for dinner,” Roosevelt told Morgenthau. “You’re going to have him for breakfast—fried,” replied Morgenthau.10

  FDR wasn’t above using the IRS to help his friends, either. In 1942, FDR intervened to save Brown & Root, a Texas defense contractor, on behalf of a young congressman named Lyndon Baines Johnson.11

  As FDR’s son, Elliott, later wrote, “other men’s tax returns fascinated Father in the 1930s.”12 He added, “My father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.”13

  In the 1950s, the IRS audited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., resulting in prosecution by the state of Alabama; King was the first person ever prosecuted by the state of Alabama.14 J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, gave regular intelligence reports on groups ranging from the John Birch Society and the NAACP to President Truman’s administration; the program, which was called COINTELPRO, had “unlimited access to tax returns,” freely handed out by the IRS. A congressional report found that the IRS “never attempted to find out” why the administration needed that information.15

  John F. Kennedy used the IRS to target political opposition, according to author John A. Andrew III. Andrew writes that JFK created a “covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support” by wielding the IRS as a club. It was called the Ideological Organizations Project. The IRS was getting ready to go after ten thousand organizations before JFK was shot.

  JFK’s good friends Victor and Walter Reuther, both radical left union leaders, sent a twenty-four-page memo to JFK suggesting that the IRS target political enemies. The proposed targets: the “far right.” Three-quarters of those audited were enemies of the JFK administration.16 JFK’s IRS even used bugs to monitor its enemies.17

  The audits continued up to JFK’s death. According to former representative John Shadegg (R-AZ), the IRS audited his father, a top political adviser to Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) in 1963. The first audit meeting took place on November 22, 1963. That day, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy. After the news broke, the lead auditor shut his notebook and said, “Well, I guess that ends this discussion, doesn’t it?”18

  JFK’s legacy of IRS audits carried forward to the Johnson administration.19 Under LBJ, Hoover took the lead in utilizing the IRS for political intimidation.20 When Senator Edward Long (D-MO) tried to investigate the IRS, the IRS promptly leaked information about his ties to union honcho Jimmy Hoffa, leading Long to lose his seat.

  Nixon’s IRS followed the pattern set by JFK. Nixon himself said he wanted a hit man for the IRS commissioner’s job: “I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he’s told, that every income-tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not our friends. Now, it’s as simple as that. If he isn’t, he doesn’t get the job.”21

  The Nixon administration infamously composed its own enemies list. George T. Bell, special assistant to Nixon, created the list, labeled “the list of opponents.” It included figures ranging from Alexander Barkan, national director of the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, to Ed Guthman, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times (“It is time to give him the message”), to Michigan Democratic congressman John Conyers (“Has known weakness for white females”).22

  When Congress considered impeaching Nixon before his resignation, one of the charges included use of the IRS to target opponents.23

  Bill Clinton, one of modern history’s worst administrative thugs, used his IRS to target political opposition as well. Between 1992 and 1997, the Clinton administration went light on IRS audits for states he wanted to win, and went heavy in states he knew he’d lose. During Travelgate, the Hillary Clinton–led effort to stack the Bill Clinton White House travel office with friends, an investigation found that an associate White House counsel had sought IRS help in going after current employees.24

  When Judicial Watch was formed in the 1990s and began suing for President Bill Clinton’s records, it quickly found itself on the wrong end of an IRS audit. “What do you expect when you sue the president?” said senior IRS official Paul Breslan.25 Judicial Watch’s audit began one month after the White House received an email asking “how can this obviously partisan organization be classified as tax exempt.” As Judicial Watch reported in its book The Corruption Chronicles, “Several democratic politicians, including Representatives Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Martin Frost (D-TX), Jim Moran (D-VA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Lewis (D-GA), and Richard Neal (D-MA), were linked to requests that the IRS check out our nonprofit status.” The former commissioner of the IRS Donald Alexander stated, “the circumstances surrounding the IRS’s audit of Judicial Watch are unusual and deviate from the procedures and practices normally followed by the IRS when investigating and auditing 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations.”

  Other conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association and the Heritage Foundation, also complained of targeting, as did Concerned Women for America, National Review, and Joseph Farah’s Western Center for Journalism.

  President Clinton’s alleged sexual misconduct victims fell victim to another sort of targeting from the IRS. After Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of rape, her nursing home business was audited. Gennifer Flowers was audited shortly after she sued James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, Little, Brown & Company, and Hillary Rodham Clinton for defamation. Clinton girlfriend Elizabeth Ward Gracen was audited. Even Katherine Prudhomme, a citizen who had the temerity to ask Vice President Al Gore about Broaddrick, was audited.26 When Paula Jones filed a sexual misconduct suit against Clinton and then refused to settle, the IRS launched an audit against her the very next day. “I find the timing very peculiar,” said a spokesperson for the Jones family. “They’re a family with two little children. They have one car, they rent a little apartment. How many people renting and making under $40,000 a year get audited?”27

  OBAMA’S EARLY ENEMIES

  President Obama is just as cutthroat a politician as any of his presidential predecessors. That willingness to use dirt against political opponents began early—and Obama has always been careful to avoid getting his hands dirty in the process. Illinois state senator Obama polled as an underdog to Democrat primary opponent Blair Hull in 2004. Hull, a magnificently wealthy former securities trader, had Obama on the ropes when the Chicago Tribune suddenly released information about Hull’s sealed divorce records, which sh
owed that his second ex-wife filed for an order of protection against him. Where did the Tribune get that information? The Tribune itself later reported that Obama’s “campaign worked aggressively behind the scenes to fuel controversy about Hull’s filings.”28 The New York Times reported that David Axelrod may have released the story originally, especially given the fact that both parties in the Hull divorce wanted to keep the records under wraps. As Ann Coulter relates, “Both Hull and his ex-wife opposed releasing their sealed divorce records, but they finally relented in response to the media’s hysteria—eighteen days before the primary. Hull was forced to spend four minutes of a debate detailing the abuse allegation in his divorce papers, explaining that his ex-wife ‘kicked me in the leg and I hit her shin to try to get her to not continue to kick me.’ ” Hull ended up finishing third in the primary.

  Obama trailed Republican opponent Jack Ryan in the general election polling as well. Ryan was a well-regarded former Goldman Sachs partner, a Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School graduate who spent his time after making millions teaching at an inner-city school in the poor South Side of Chicago. Fortunately, the Tribune was available to help out again. This time, they filed for release of Ryan’s custody records from Hollywood actress Jeri Lynn Ryan. Amid those filings were allegations by Jeri that Jack had taken her to “sex clubs” overseas, as well as in New York and New Orleans. Jack denied her claims—after all, this was a divorce case, when spouses make ridiculous claims on a regular basis—but the media was all over it. Ryan dropped out of the race. Alan Keyes stepped in, and was quickly blown away by Obama.29

  Obama’s team carried forward those tactics in 2008, this time with the help of would-be do-gooders within the government. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, was confronted by then-senator Obama in his driveway on October 12, 2008. He had the temerity to ask Obama questions about his economic plans: “I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year. Your new tax plan’s going to tax me more, isn’t it?” Obama unwisely answered, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” That answer catapulted Wurzelbacher—aka Joe the Plumber—to the national spotlight. During the third presidential debate between Republican nominee John McCain and Obama, McCain brought up Wurzelbacher multiple times. Wurzelbacher then told Katie Couric of CBS Evening News that Obama’s tax plan was a slippery slope toward socialism. In Ohio, McCain told a crowd that they were “all Joe the Plumber.”

  With Joe the Plumber becoming a rallying cry for Republicans, the media began digging into this new obstacle to their favored candidate. On October 16, four days after the initial encounter, ABC News reported that Wurzelbacher had an outstanding tax lien of approximately $1,200.30

  Wurzelbacher quickly paid what he owed. But while the media dug into Wurzelbacher’s past, state employees in Ohio did the same with his government records. Three separate times, accounts assigned variously to the offices of Ohio attorney general Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency, and the Toledo Police Department were used to search confidential government information on Wurzelbacher.31

  That wasn’t Obama’s fault. But he certainly didn’t speak out too stridently about the digging. His Ohio spokesman, Isaac Baker, said, “Invasions of privacy should not be tolerated. If these records were accessed inappropriately, it had nothing to do with our campaign and should be investigated fully.” That was the extent of the campaign’s response.32 New York mayor Rudy Giuliani also called for a full-scale investigation, but was slightly less tepid in his rationale: “The answer to this should not be given three to four weeks after election day. . . . If this is the way an Obama administration is going to conduct itself, the American people have a right to know this before the fact.”33

  Unfortunately, the investigation didn’t conclude until substantially after the election. On November 20, 2008, the Ohio inspector general reported that Wurzelbacher’s records had indeed been improperly searched. It turned out that Helen E. Jones-Kelley, head of the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, authorized the searches on child support payments, temporary aid to families, and unemployment benefits. The report concluded that even though the searches “were done in the midst of a political campaign,” it’s not clear the information was released “in an effort to support any political activity or agenda.”34 Later, it turned out, Jones-Kelley had been sending fund-raising information to the Obama campaign, and using state email accounts to do so. She also donated $2,500 to Obama’s campaign. She resigned from her post on December 17, 2008. So did two other members of her staff. Democratic governor Ted Strickland announced that he “values Helen Jones-Kelley’s years of public service as a dedicated advocate for the most vulnerable among us.”35 Wurzelbacher’s lawsuit, with the help of Judicial Watch, was dismissed on the grounds that Jones-Kelley’s violation of his privacy didn’t violate his privacy rights under the Constitution. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch commented, “The implications of this court decision are frightening. Essentially, the court has said that government officials can feel free to rifle through the private files of citizens without fear of being held accountable in court.”36

  TEA PARTY “TERRORISTS”

  Americans celebrated President Obama’s inauguration as though it were a coronation. Anchors openly wept on television. Even some conservative commentators wrongly hailed his election as the culmination of the civil rights movement, as though the election of an unqualified black man to the nation’s highest office were anything but a perverse form of reverse racism. In the early days of his tenure, Obama had few opponents. His approval rating clocked in at a stellar 68 percent, with just 12 percent disapproving.37

  But instead of focusing laserlike on the economy, as he had repeatedly promised during his presidential campaign, Obama began crusading for a nationalized health-care program. The push for Obamacare, as it came to be called, launched on March 5, 2009, with Obama holding a conference to discuss health-care reform. Bills began moving through the House in July, and then moved to the Senate in September. Obama’s approval ratings sank from 68 percent to 56 percent.38

  That sinking approval rating came thanks to a new movement in American politics: the Tea Party. Launched shortly after Obama’s inauguration in response to his financial proposals, the Tea Party gained prominence as a national movement. Rick Santelli of CNBC, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, stated that the Obama plan to change mortgage standards was “promoting bad behavior.” He said that traders should throw derivatives into the Chicago River on July 1, 2009. The idea quickly took off.

  The Tea Party’s grassroots philosophy of small government alienated and frightened the Obama administration, skyrocketing to the top of the Obama hit list. Marking his hundredth day in office, Obama bashed the Tea Party: “Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around,” Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security. But let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”39 In November 2009, Obama again termed Tea Partiers “tea-baggers,” a fringe sexual slang term popularized by Tea Party opponents to degrade the movement.40

  Obama’s rhetoric permeated the media; Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher both began using the term tea-bagger as well. The NAACP suggested that the Tea Partiers were closet racists. So did Morgan Freeman, Sean Penn, Alan Cumming, and Janeane Garofalo. Obama himself played the race card with regard to the Tea Party, according to journalist Kenneth T. Walsh: “Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent ‘Tea Party’ move
ment that was then surging across the country.”41

  In the minds of the Obama higher-ups, the Tea Party wasn’t merely racist, it was terrorist. When Tea Partiers urged Congress to use the debt limit as a lever to limit federal spending, former Obama car czar Steven Rattner told MSNBC’s audience that Tea Partiers wanted to use a “form of economic terrorism.” They were, he said, strapping themselves “with dynamite standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour, and saying ‘either you do it my way, or we’re going to blow you up.’ ”42 Joe Klein of Time said, “Osama bin Laden, if he were still alive, could not have come up with a more clever strategy for strangling our nation.”43

  There were early indicators that the Obama administration did not limit its Tea Party opposition to rhetoric. The Department of Homeland Security’s first major report on terrorism targeted “rightwing extremism.” DHS suggested, “Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president.” DHS continued, “Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use.” Those “rightwing extremists” included those who were “mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”44 The Obama IRS would later use many of these same descriptors in targeting its enemies.